The United States entered World War II following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. During the surprise bombardment, a Black naval messman, Dorie Miller, manned an antiaircraft gun and shot down at least two Japanese planes. Miller became a powerful symbol of African American patriotic loyalty and commitment to the war effort. But Black people, as represented by the “double V” slogan, were committed not just to victory against fascism abroad but to victory against racism at home as well.
They faced an arduous battle. Approximately 2.5 million African Americans registered for the draft, a process rife with discrimination. Of the more than 1 million men inducted into the military through the draft, 75 percent served in the army. When they arrived at training camps, especially those located in the South, Black draftees endured humiliation and abuse. The army rigidly enforced racial segregation, often treating German POWs with more respect than Black servicemen. When Black soldiers went off base, they posed both a real and symbolic threat to Jim Crow and frequently clashed with local whites.
As in World War I, the military consigned the majority of Black troops to labor and service units. Racist ideas that Black men lacked the cognitive ability to be effective combatants and officers continued to pervade the thinking of War Department officials. This belief, however, did not stop the military from putting Black servicemen in harm’s way, both abroad and on the home front. In the summer of 1944, Black dockworkers stationed at Port Chicago, California, refused to work following two munition explosions that resulted in 320 deaths, 202 of whom were African American. The navy court-martialed fifty men on charges of mutiny and sentenced them to eight to fifteen years of hard labor.
During the war, the military deployed approximately half a million African American soldiers overseas. Although service units, like the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion and the 490th Port Battalion, were present from D-Day on, the army initially had no intention of using Black soldiers as combatants on the European front. Pressure from civil rights organizations and the Black press eventually forced the army to send the reactivated 92nd “Buffaloes” Division to Italy in the summer of 1944. As in World War I, the division’s racist officers lacked faith in the men under their command and derided their allegedly poor performance in combat. The all-Black 93rd Division arrived in the Pacific Theater in early 1944. It finally saw action during the New Guinea campaign. Most Black troops in the Pacific, however, toiled in support capacities. Isaac Woodard, who served as a longshoreman in the 429th Port Battalion, arrived on New Guinea in October 1944, loading and unloading ships.
In spite of discrimination, Black servicemen did make significant contributions and took advantage of limited opportunities. During the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, the army found itself in desperate need of replacement troops. In January 1945, over the objections of his senior officers, Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower called for a limited number of Black volunteers to fight alongside white soldiers. The 761st Tank Battalion distinguished itself on the European front and was in combat until the final days of the war. The navy grudgingly opened its ranks to Black volunteers. Although the majority of the sixty-five thousand Black seamen continued to serve as messmen, the navy did commission the first Black officers in its history, and one ship, the Mason, had an all-Black crew. The Marine Corps proved most willing to accept Black servicemen in its forces. While the approximately twenty thousand Black Marines trained at a segregated facility in Montford Point, North Carolina, and never saw combat, they paved the way for future enlistees.
The most significant examples of racial progress in the military occurred in the Air Corps. Bending to pressure, on January 9, 1941, the War Department agreed to the creation of the 99th Pursuit Squadron with headquarters located in Tuskegee, Alabama. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., was part of the first graduating class of cadets and subsequently took command of the squadron. The War Department’s refusal to send them into battle was the last straw for Judge William Hastie, who resigned in protest in January 1943. Manpower needs and pressure from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt ultimately put them in action, first in North Africa and then in Italy. In February 1944, the 99th was joined by the 100th, 301st, and 302nd squadrons, becoming the 332nd Fighter Group. By the end of the war, 992 men became pilots, with 450 serving overseas. Used primarily as bomber escorts, the fighters of the 332nd flew 1,578 missions with over fifteen thousand individual sorties and won numerous commendations.
Black women, too, took advantage of opportunities created by the war. Along with entering the industrial workforce by the thousands, they served in the military, enduring both racism and sexism throughout their experiences. They made up approximately 4 percent of the fifteen thousand enlistees in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs); Charity Adams Earley became the first African American female WAC officer. The navy’s Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES), established by Congress in 1942, was originally all white. But at President Roosevelt’s insistence, the WAVES began accepting African American volunteers in 1944, and seventy-two Black women ultimately underwent training.
After the war came to an end on September 2, 1945, African Americans immediately began to wonder if their service and sacrifice had been in vain. The military did not award Medals of Honor to any Black soldiers and largely ignored their contributions to the war effort. As they returned to their homes across the country and especially in the South, their expectations for freedom and increased rights were met with fierce resistance. In the spring and summer of 1946, white supremacists killed several Black veterans and attacked countless others.
On February 12, 1946, Isaac Woodard was almost home. He had distinguished himself during the war, rising to become a sergeant and earning several medals. He returned to the United States on January 15 and received his official discharge on February 12 at Camp Gordon, Georgia. There he got on a Greyhound bus along with other newly minted veterans and headed for Winnsboro, South Carolina, to be reunited with his wife, Rosa.
During the ride, when Woodard asked the white bus driver to use the restroom, they got into a heated argument. When the bus stopped in Batesburg, South Carolina, the driver called for local police to remove Woodard. Two white officers arrived, forcibly took Woodard off the bus, and viciously beat him with their batons before dragging his unconscious body to jail. When Woodard awoke the next morning, his face battered and covered in dried blood, he could not see. Both his eyes had been destroyed, leaving the twenty-seven-year-old veteran permanently blind.
News of Woodard’s blinding shocked Black America. It offered a brutal reminder that while the foreign war might have ended, the domestic war for civil rights raged on. The NAACP, led by Executive Secretary Walter White, used the incident to pressure President Harry Truman to act. In December 1946, Truman established the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. And on July 26, 1948, in response to its recommendations and to continued agitation from A. Philip Randolph, Truman issued Executive Order 9981. The order abolished segregation in the armed forces. Black veterans such as Medgar Evers, Amzie Moore, and Robert Williams, inspired by their war service, became key leaders in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. World War II transformed African Americans and ultimately changed the course of American history.